背景介绍：
宜家，作为全球最大的家具零售商，以其经济实惠的产品和精心设计的购物体验闻名，年销售额高达480亿欧元。近年来，为维持增长并适应市场变化，宜家积极投资于电子商务和新型店铺形态，如城市中心的小型店铺和规划工作室。同时，宜家还涉足二手家具市场，推出在线二手交易平台，旨在进一步提升购物便捷性、促进可持续发展，并加强与顾客的互动。宜家能再次颠覆家具行业吗？
Can IKEA disrupt the furniture
business again?
宜家能再次颠覆家具行业吗？
It wants to help you sell your Billy bookcase
它想帮你卖掉你的比利书架
There are worse ways to spend a lazy Saturday than to take a trip to one of IKEA’s giant furniture stores. Young children can be swiftly deposited at Småland, the supervised play area, leaving you to navigate the maze of flat-pack furniture and bric-a-brac at your leisure; you might even stop at the restaurant for a plate of Swedish meatballs.
要度过一个慵懒的周六，似乎没有比去宜家大型家具店更好的方式了。年幼的孩子可以迅速被安顿在 Småland，这是一个配备监护的游乐区域，能让你在探索平板包装家具与小摆设构成的迷宫时得以片刻休憩；你甚至还有机会在餐厅小憩，品尝一盘地道的瑞典肉丸。
IKEA’s cheap products—and its knack for getting shoppers to walk away with bagfuls of adornments they never knew they needed—have made it into the world’s biggest furniture company, with €48bn ($53bn) in annual sales last year.
宜家的经济实惠产品——以及它擅长让购物者满载而归，即便是那些他们从未意识到自己需要的装饰品——成就了它作为全球最大家具公司的地位，去年年销售额高达480亿欧元（约合530亿美元）。
The company, which is held privately through a bewildering network of foundations, controls around 9% of the fragmented global furniture market. In an effort to keep growing, it has been investing in its e-commerce offering and adding new store formats. Its latest experiment, in second-hand furniture, could help it get both bigger and greener.
宜家通过一个错综复杂的基金会网络维持其私有状态，牢牢控制着全球家具市场约9%的份额。为了维持增长势头，宜家不断投资于电子商务产品的开发，并探索新的店铺形态。其最新的尝试聚焦于二手家具领域，此举有望助力公司进一步壮大，同时提升其环保形象。
In the past few years IKEA has been busily trying to make buying its wares more convenient, particularly for customers without a car. As much as they might enjoy wandering around one of its giant stores, many shoppers do not have a day to spare to buy two folding chairs, says Jesper Brodin, the boss of INGKA, which owns most of IKEA’s shops (though not its intellectual property).
在过去的几年间，宜家一直致力于提升商品购买的便捷性，特别是针对无车一族的顾客。英格卡集团（拥有宜家大部分实体店铺，但不包括其知识产权）的首席执行官佩尔·布罗顿指出，尽管人们享受在宜家大型商店中悠闲漫步的乐趣，但许多购物者因时间限制而无法轻松购买如两把折叠椅这样的物品。
Online sales, which the company was initially slow to adopt, have been a priority since the covid-19 pandemic, when nearly all IKEA shops were closed. They now account for 23% of the total.
自新冠爆发以来，公司更加重视线上销售，彼时几乎所有宜家店铺均暂停营业。目前，线上销售额已占总销售额的23%。
IKEA has also been moving its stores closer to customers. It now has “planning centres” in central locations where customers can put together their ideal kitchen, bedroom or bathroom.
宜家亦在不断拉近与顾客的距离。如今，它在城市中心设立了“规划工作室”，顾客可以在此将理想的厨房、卧室或浴室设计方案拼凑成型。
Smaller stores in busy shopping districts have cropped up in numerous cities, too. In July IKEA invested in a tower being built on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue; a new shop will open on Oxford Street in central London in the spring.
众多城市的繁华商圈内，也出现了宜家的小型店铺。今年7月，宜家投资了曼哈顿第五大道正在建设的一栋大楼；而在今年春天，伦敦市中心的牛津街也将迎来一家新店开业。
The company has also been buying malls where it intends to make IKEA the anchor tenant. In November INGKA bought Churchill Square, the main shopping centre in Brighton, in southern England. It will set up shop on a site once occupied by Debenhams, a failed department store.
此外，宜家还积极收购购物中心，并计划让宜家成为这些购物中心的主要租户。11月，英格卡集团收购了位于英国南部布莱顿的丘吉尔广场购物中心，并计划在已倒闭的百货公司德本汉姆原址开设新店。
Both developments are new for IKEA, but hardly for the industry. More novel is its recent announcement of a platform for people to sell their secondhand IKEA furniture online, beginning with trials in Oslo and Madrid that will run until December, ahead of a worldwide rollout next year.
上述两项举措对宜家而言是新的探索，但对整个家具行业而言却充满挑战。更具创新意义的是，宜家最近宣布推出一个平台，允许人们在线销售二手宜家家具，该服务首先在奥斯陆和马德里进行为期至12个月的试点，并计划于明年在全球范围内正式推出。
IKEA customers can already sell their furniture back to the firm at its shops, a service more than 200,000 customers made use of last year, twice as many as in 2022. The company’s secondhand platform will allow people to palm their old furniture off to new buyers directly.
宜家顾客已可将旧家具退回至店铺，去年超过20万名顾客使用了这项服务，是2022年的两倍之多。宜家的二手平台将进一步允许人们直接将旧家具出售给新买家。
IKEA will provide recommended prices, generic photos and product details (including, importantly, assembly instructions); sellers can then add their own pictures and choose their price. The buyer collects the furniture.
宜家将提供建议售价、通用照片及产品详细信息（包括至关重要的组装指南）；随后，卖家可上传实物照片并设定价格。买家则需自行取货。
IKEA products already account for around a third of secondhand-furniture sales by volume, according to Mr Brodin. Although the platform will be free to use, at least at first, it will provide IKEA a way to encourage sellers back to its stores. If they opt for an IKEA voucher as payment, they receive a 15% bonus on the sale price.
布罗顿表示，宜家产品已占据二手家具市场销量的三分之一左右。尽管该平台将免费开放使用，但至少初期阶段，它将为宜家提供一种吸引卖家重返门店的策略。若卖家选择宜家代金券作为支付方式，还将额外获得售价15%的奖励。
重难点词汇：
adornment [əˈdɔːrnmənt] n. 装饰品；装饰
bewilder [bɪˈwɪldər] v. 使困惑；使迷惑；使茫然
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